Friday, January 16, 2009

hummus and kofta


it's been 9 mths since gav got back from qatar so he's finally able to stomach a bit of arab food. we made this meal together and it was great fun smooshing the chickpeas to become hummus! it doesn't look pretty but this dip is yummy. we added so much garlic our breaths smelled of garlic afterwards. they say in arab-land each family has their own recipe for hummus. well ours is full of garlic and sesame seeds with a tinge of lemon and chilli powder. I won't give you an exact recipe but basically you put the cooked chickpeas in a blender and blend it up with olive oil, cumin, tahini, bit of lemon juice and lotsa fresh chopped garlic. chilli powder is optional.
this is lebanese garlic sauce which i didn't like because it's way too pungent.
we had it all with some olives and raw onion [Mmmmm] this is the ultimate bad breath meal!
to make the beef koftas, first we chopped up some garlic and red onion.

then we mixed it into the beef mince with salt and pepper, ground pine nuts, cumin and cinnamon powder. ours was not very tasty because we omitted some ingredients which we didnt have/too lazy to get, like parsley, breadcrumbs and egg.
then we shaped them into these sausage shapes and pan fried them until cooked. they're sort of like burgers. then we lightly toasted some flatbreads. the real arab flatbreads are really flat. these ones were from mydin and they were leavened so uh...not very authentic.
a meal like this at tarbush would've come up to at least RM20 a head i reckon.
overall it was a very satisfying and tasty meal but i don't recommend eating this too often or you'll get a sorethroat.

No comments: